Notes to Self

Sending in-class: Compose two “Dad Jokes” to send.  For example: “Two guys stole a calendar.  They got six months each.”   (Or: “What do you do with an elephant with three balls?  Walk him and pitch to the rhino.”)    We’ll practice more sending of longer passages.  Revisit the Wikipedia front page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and pick a couple of items from Did you know…...

We’re at the two-thirds/homestretch-ish point in the class.  The speed creeps up 1 wpm for each the next few sessions, eventually hitting 13.  Remember the overall goals are: having fun, making friends, and picking up a new skill for a lifetime.  Absent from these goals is “beating yourself up because you didn’t hit flawless 13wpm on the nanosecond the 13wpm...

For Session 8 sending in class: What are your three most valued (to you) household appliances and/or power tools? (e.g., KitchenAid mixer, coffee grinder, and cordless drill) This weekend are two additional possible contact events for QSOs:1) CQ Magazine World-Wide CW sprint on 160m – The exchange is simply a signal report of 5NN and your state.  Based on my hour...

As we all have felt, it’s quite normal to feel self-induced pressure at not maintaining perfection and, God forbid, be tempted to drop out and do it another time. A better way of looking at it is “if you stick around, will you be further along in your CW journey (and knowledge of Scottish inventions)?” Obviously, the answer is yes...

Sessions 4 and 5 repeat the prior sessions, but bump up the Farnsworth speed to 5 then 6. It doesn’t look like a lot until you’re trying to listen! As I mentioned, it’s very common to feel an adrenaline bump when it’s your turn to send.  If you mess up, or are feeling flustered, take a deep breath, send eight...

For our last, unstructured session, we’ll do some more sending and copying using these lists of fruits and vegetables, and animals.  As with the exercise we did with the state abbreviations, send a word to the next person, they’ll send the word back, “R” if correct.  (If they don’t copy, “?” to resend)  They’ll send a word to the next...

This is the ad hoc, unscripted part of the course. Welcome, Session 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Bonus homework:If you can, listen to the K1USN SST on Sunday either on air or via Web SDR, see what you can pick off. If you want to try to make an on-air...

For the bonus homework: Compose an amateur radio-related haiku, a three-line poem where the lines are 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.  Some examples from a prior class are below.  As you practice at home, think of where it would be appropriate to add additional spacing to compensate for the lack of context clues: No propagationUntil someone calls CQThen the...